Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

"Shoeshine stand, Southeastern U.S., 1936. (Title and date from Walker Evans, 1973. No caption for this image in FSA/OWI shelflist.)" Who will be the first Shorpyite to clear up a longstanding curatorial mystery and figure out where this is? Large-format safety negative by Walker Evans for the FSA. View full size.

I just started scanning my sister's photos of her kids from the 1960s. Here's why she was smart to have saved the negatives. Back in 1963, they lived in South Gate, California, in a neighborhood full of classic cars, it seems. My nephew Jimmy in a 2¼-inch square Kodacolor negative. View full size.

January 1909. Tifton, Georgia. "Workers in the Tifton Cotton Mills. All these children were working or helping, 125 in all. Some of the smallest have been there one year or more." Photo and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine. View full size.

March 1936. Vicksburg, Mississippi. "Vicksburg Negroes and shop front." A close-up of the New Deal barbershop seen in the previous post. Nitrate negative by Walker Evans for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.